Carrying maternity notes in late pregnancy - necessary?

I'm 3 days off due date, going out for dinner etc tonight about an hour away from home, 1.5 hrs away from our hospital (but close to other hospitals)

Would you take your maternity notes with you? I really don't want to be bothered lugging them about. Worst case scenario and I suddenly go into rapid labour and end up at a different hospital without my notes, what happens?

I would definitely take them, no doubt about it! It's not like taking a suitcase or something, it's a4 notes. Hospitals don't keep electronic records- everything is in your handheld notes. I remember at antenatal classes, the MW told us she would send DH or someone else home to get them!

Can't it just stay in the car? Mine stayed in the car alongside my hospital bag from about 35 weeks onwards. Came in handy when we rushed in with pre-eclampsia symptoms at 37 weeks and they said 'righto, you're not leaving hospital, we're inducing you tomorrow'

Definitely take them. They're really useful... Eg If they take your blood pressure, they can look through and see that that bp is normal for you.

Plus, you know you're low risk but they don't know that, you could have all kinds of information in your past, like crazy medical conditions or have had 98 miscarriages etc etc. Plus, if you take them, they'll be a bit annoying but nothing will happen. If you leave them you will definitely go into labour.

Sorry to potentially hijack the thread but I'm so confused about why all the info isn't on normal medical records, so that wherever you end up they just punch your NHS number into a computer and it shows it all like it does with every other kind of medical info.

Surely loads of people must lose them or their dog eats them or they forget to take them when they go out for a meal etc.

The NHS has about 50 different computer systems, none of them talk to each other and none of them work very well. Believe me, a centralised nationwide computer system would be amazing but for some reason is considered too costly and too labour intensive to be worth it at the moment. Infact, we may see a move towards hand held notes for more and more patients with different health conditions.

I think the NHS should strike a deal with Apple or Microsoft and get the whole thing sorted out, but I'm living in a dream land!

They abandoned the joining up of NHS computer systems following the financial crisis, as it was going to cost mega money to implement nationally, and they realised the money was no longer there. Getting the legal and security aspects of joining it all up is so expensive. GP's operate as private businesses and our NHS system has moved to a more business like model, so they all have different systems that they are paying for and usually sign up to a software contract for many years that they don't want to break due to financial implications and having to retrain staff. This is one of the downsides of a model that is more like the private sector - it can end up less joined up.

I took my notes with me after 30 weeks or so if I was going more than a few hours from home or staying overnight. Otherwise, no. But everything was entirely straightforward so there wasn't really anything significant in them. If I'd had complications or a medical condition, I'd have probably kept them on me.

I always took my notes if i was going anywhere far just in case. Near the end when i went out without the car i used an app on my phone which takes photos and turns them into pdfs. Meant we had really clear images of the whole thing.